[thechat] Car Audio Questions

[Quackamoe]

Quite some time ago I asked for suggestions for
road trip music and ended up buying "The Cream
of Clapton." Great CD. Thanks for the tips from
all who responded. However, it turned out
that I had some hardware problems with my car
stereo. Bought the car used and it had a nice
Alpine AM/FM/CD unit but the speakers were prolly
orig equip. I think that by the time I bought
the Clapton CD I'd already damaged the speakers;
the frequency of Clapton's voice would cause a
vibration in the speakers that was just unbearable.

Then the speakers started putting out a sound like
you'd get from a dirty needle, then the speaker wires
apparently started shorting out intermittently and
eventually there was absolutely no sound coming
out of the speakers. The Alpine seems to be okay
though. (Oh, and the Clapton CD sounds fine on a
cheap boom box.)

Now I've gotten some Christmas money and want to
get back to having sounds in the car (other than
road noise). Especially after spending an hour
and a half on the 57 freeway yesterday covering
a distance that usually takes 20 minutes because
I didn't know there'd been a bad wreck because I
don't have a radio in my car.

So, I'm thinking of getting new speakers (4x) and
maybe a power amp. I haven't looked into decent
audio stuff in years and am looking for a bit of
guidance. Last Christmas I bought my wife and my
son each a CD player for their cars. Got 'em at
Fry's. Koss. $49 each. Junk.Junk.Junk.Junk.Junk.
One CD player lasted about 5 weeks, the other
about 5 months. Both radios still work. Grrrrr.
So,

1) I don't want to buy JUNK.
2) I want to be able to crank up Ozzie and/or
     Grieg without frying the voice coils*
3) Of course, I want to spend as little as
     possible

Now, about XM. Since I'm a Boeing employee and
since Boeing built the satellites that send out
the XM signal I get a deal on an XM device,
US$100 off. I went to their website
(http://www.xmradio.com/) and spent my lunch hour
there. Came away still wondering what I do with
my Alpine if I get an XM thingie. I'll drop by
Best Buy this weekend to ask questions unless
somebody here has figured this all out already.

Terry

* do they still have voice coils?

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